It seems preposterous to me to suggest nothing was altered by T2, but that seems to be the implication in TS.

Of course nothing was altered by T2. None of the events of The Terminator were undone when Cyberdyne got blown up. Since John still existed and Sarah still remembered a Terminator coming after her in 1984, obviously the machines still rose up, John Connor still led a revolt against them, Skynet still sent a Terminator to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor, and Kyle Reese still came back to save her. Any effect the actions of T2 had was decidedly minimal, otherwise the entire first film would have been undone and the second never would have happened.

You're assuming a linear, logical timeline. That seems off to me considering how John Connor was fathered and how T2 shows the origin of Cyberdyne's technology, both of which are total paradoxes and logistically impossible. There was a timeloop that caused John to be fathered by Kyle Reese, but he still existed when they closed the loop. This isn't truly logical, but neither was the time paradox in the first place. It's the sort of thing that always happens in time travel, where people have still experienced a timeline even though what they do should have prevented it from ever happening.

Have you seen the original ending of T2? It was changed to the more open ending I feel not because Cameron was unhappy with this conclusion (it shows an aged Sarah Connor far enough into the future to know Judgement Day was averted), but because it wasn't well executed and became redundant - the clear implication of T2's storyline is that they prevented Skynet's rise.

It's just that T3 and TS chose to ignore this in order to continue the franchise.

I think it is as linear and logical as could be expected from a series of movies made over the course of 25 years, by three different directors, and at least as many different writers. I think the events of T1, T3, and T4 fit together fairly well, if we use Reese's age as a yardstick.

He was approximately 25 in T1. He said he grew up after Judgement Day. If Judgement Day happened in 2003 (as it did in T3), and he was born shortly after, he would have been 14 or 15 in 2018 (as he was in T4), and approximately 25 in 2029, when he was sent back to 1984. T2 fits* if you assume as I do that all their efforts to stop Skynet's creation were for naught and were merely part of what was "supposed" to happen.

I won't say anyone who doesn't think that way is wrong, that's just how I look at the Terminator "saga".

(*Except for John Connor being about twice as old as he should have been. And where the hell did the T1000 come from? According to Reese in T1, humanity had "won" over Skynet before he was sent back in time. If that's so, how did Skynet have time to develop the T1000? The T800 was still cutting edge, according to Reese. I guess we can assume Reese was wrong about humanity's victory and that T2 takes place later than 1991 but, man, those two things seriously needed some explanation. T3's TX is an even bigger head-scratcher than the T1000 but whoever wrote that movie was just following Cameron's lead from T2.)

I think the events of T1, T3, and T4 fit together fairly well, if we use Reese's age as a yardstick.

For the most part, I agree actually.

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T2 fits* if you assume as I do that all their efforts to stop Skynet's creation were for naught and were merely part of what was "supposed" to happen.

I won't say anyone who doesn't think that way is wrong, that's just how I look at the Terminator "saga".

Fair enough.

On a related matter, I must say T3 making all the events of the second half of T2 essentially pointless (other than, perhaps, developing JC into a better man) is one of the reasons I was unhappy with it. Taken on its own merits, I actually think it is a well-made summer blockbuster, with far better action and characters than TS.

That was terrible! Was that her auld woman voice or Harrison Ford-esque purposeful bad acting to ruin the scene?

I saw T:S yesterday and it certainly was quite the feast for the eyes, the nod to T2 with the bike-terminators and the truck was excellent.

However by the time the third act rolled around I did get a little bored as there was an element of messy Transformers action and the action was near continuous! Exciting stuff but it can get a little much after a while. Certainly not the best written film and some of the plot holes were just silly, certainly a case of 'connect the explosive set pieces' writing, still I don't really mind, did what it set out to do and considering its setting I don't really see it as a 'true' Terminator film, not because it isn't 'pure' enough but its basically a sci-fi war movie with robots, rather than standard chase format of the first 3 with a single bad-ass monster.

One bit that did make me laugh my ass off though, and probably more than I should have, was the rednecks. The moment I heard a southern accent, I knew there was going to be an attempted gang-rape, such are Hollywood's cardboard sub-villains.

Also (bit of a spoiler), why did Skynet take hundreds of human prisoner? Kyle Reese maybe but the large Walkers are blatantly designed to capture people (defeating the idea of a Terminator arguably), and although it struck me as a nice nod to War of the Worlds was pointless, not the only hole but just the most obvious IMO.

All in all though popcorn joy that should be seen with a badass sound system and big screen

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"For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day of your life. But for me... it was Tuesday".

Also (bit of a spoiler), why did Skynet take hundreds of human prisoner? Kyle Reese maybe but the large Walkers are blatantly designed to capture people (defeating the idea of a Terminator arguably), and although it struck me as a nice nod to War of the Worlds was pointless, not the only hole but just the most obvious IMO.

They were going to convert them into Terminators/use their flesh to grow Terminators. It seems rather silly to me that they have to do that, considering we can already clone some human organs in labs today.

Actually just remembered something I really liked about T:S, arguably just an excuse to ramp up the tension but it struck me as a subtle joke, particularly when you consider it follows on from a trilogy of Arnie action blockbusters. When Reese and Marcus (and Star) are trying to blow up the giant walker at the gas station and Reese shoots a hole into the petrol tanker but it doesn't blow up. I smirked at that, as its probably one of most cliche 'things' to happen in an action movie and to my knowledge pretty difficult to do in reality. However as it takes place in a thin-plotted boom fest its seem a pretty weak lampshade if at all.

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"For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day of your life. But for me... it was Tuesday".

Didn't care for it. Maybe I was expecting to much. I thought Sam Worthington was great as Marcus but that's it. I love Bale but was disappointed with his performance. I shouldn't blame him though he didn't have a lot to work with.

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There's no worse feeling than that millisecond you're sure you are going to die after leaning your chair back a little too far~ ruminations

I saw this one last weekend. I think it is a decent film on its own, but a lesser Terminator film. It has an interesting premise and two good lead actors, but soon it degenerates into an orgy of explosions and bad dialogue.

Stuff like the first person point of view during the opening battle or the giant robot attack are cool seen in isolation, but the whole film just looks overdirected and underwritten to me.

Take the scene where Worthington's character escapes the resistance outpost. It could have been a short, suspense based scene. Instead, all Hell breaks loose very soon and we get shootouts, exploding mines, forests burning Apocalypse Now style, an helicopter crash and robotic anacondas.

And it's the same with almost every scene. We barely get any plot or character development between explosion and explosion.

The best of it? The Mad Max-like future world, Sam Worthington's acting, and the small and not so small nods to the other films in the series, such as Worthington pushing the windshield of his vehicle aside, not unlike the T-1000 in Terminator 2, or the final scenes in Skynet's assembly line.

Let's hope next time we get some time travelling and a less hectic place. I'd like to learn more about the future world, the dangers the survivors have to face, or the way the war is fought.

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Due to the horrifying nature of this film, no one will be admitted to the theatre.

To be brief, this is a piece of crap which sole purpose is to make money. T2: Judgement Day is an action masterpiece. The storyline of that film makes any of the following "sequels" totally pointless.

"Piece of crap," probably should have been this movie's tagline. The worst part is, I really, really, reeeeeally WANTED to like this movie. I tried to. I almost did. But, in the end, it just sucked. Not to mention the sheer amount of problems regarding continuity with the rest of the series (no, I'm not talking about all that overconvoluted time travel nonsense... "well if he was killed, then there'd be no reason to send the terminator back in time and then it would've never happened and then blah blah blah my head hurts"... I'm talking about much more simple things). I'm tempted to say that this movie took the franchise's balls away, but the truth is that Rise Of The Machines did that much more effectively. Salvation was ALMOST "okay." And I would've taken "okay" over nothing at all, which is what I got. I'm a big Terminator series fan, but, seriously, this just blew donkey nuts. I guess that's what happens when you take Christian Bale (ugh) and a guy with a douche name like McG (double ugh) and let 'em loose. Actually, I don't really blame McG that much. He did a decent job with the direction. I blame the writers more than anything. Salvation was at least better than Rise, but that's not really saying much.

Frankly, I think it was a terrible idea to go into the post-apocalyptic future/man vs. machine war that the previous entries had been leading up to. If you watch T1 and T2, you see those short segments that give us glimpses into the future, and you get extremely stoked and you're like "man, I really wanna see that... I hope they make a movie of THAT someday," but I think that, in general, you don't really mean that. 'Cause it works better with the mystery intact. It works better when you have no idea what's REALLY happening in the future, and you're imagination fills in the gaps for you. When you actually show us the things that've been only in our heads for years, then there's no way that it's gonna compare, and all you'll end up doing (as Salvation did) is ruin our own visions with mediocre ones contrived by half-interested writers pumping out a lackluster storyline in an interpretation of the mythos that pales in comparison to the brief glimpses we were given before.

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"On a mountain of skulls in a castle of pain, I sat on a throne of blood. What was will be, what is will be no more. Now is the season of evil." - Vigo (former Carpathian warlord and one-time Slayer lyric-writer)

If you watch T1 and T2, you see those short segments that give us glimpses into the future, and you get extremely stoked and you're like "man, I really wanna see that... I hope they make a movie of THAT someday," but I think that, in general, you don't really mean that. 'Cause it works better with the mystery intact. It works better when you have no idea what's REALLY happening in the future, and you're imagination fills in the gaps for you. When you actually show us the things that've been only in our heads for years, then there's no way that it's gonna compare, and all you'll end up doing (as Salvation did) is ruin our own visions with mediocre ones contrived by half-interested writers pumping out a lackluster storyline in an interpretation of the mythos that pales in comparison to the brief glimpses we were given before.

The thing is, those short sequences in "Terminator" were done in 1984. They look far better than the whole of TS, made 25 years later with huge sums of money and "advanced" technology at the filmmakers disposal.

Even the crappy Sega and SNES Terminator games were more badass that this $ludge.